While your local bartender may fumble when you ask him for a Sex on the Beach or a Tight Twister, the Monsieur robot bartender, who knows 300 cocktails and can make them in seconds, will not. And should you not know what you want, you can pick a theme like “bachelorette party” or “Irish pub,” and the robot will offer up some 20 to 25 drink selections for you to pick from. The manufacturer is selling the product to both businesses and consumers — the first robots (which retail for $5,000) will ship in April or May of this year; just don’t expect it to fully replace your local bartender anytime soon — the patrons need someone to cry to.

2. Soldier

Battlefield robots could replace combat soldiers.Source: News Limited

Robots could replace one-fourth of all US combat soldiers by 2030, according to statements made in January by US Army Gen. Robert Cone. It’s an effort by the US Army to become “a smaller, more lethal, deployable and agile force.” The robots may be able to do everything from dismantling landmines to engaging in frontline combat.

3. Pharmacist

The RIVA machine in pharmaceutical services.Source: Supplied

At the pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, it’s not a human who fills the prescriptions — it’s a robot. Computers receive the prescriptions and robots package and dispense them. During its first phase-in, the university says, there were no errors in the 350,000 doses the robot filled. What’s more, robots may be able to do a better job than humans at making sure the prescription a human is picking up won’t interact with other medications he or she is taking, says professor Erik Brynjolfsson, director of MIT’s Center for Digital Business.

Much of farming involves routine tasks that robots can more efficiently do, including surveying the land, driving the tractors, and cutting, pruning and harvesting the crops, says IBISWorld industry analyst Jeremy Edwards. Indeed, there are already wine-bots, which prune vines in vineyards, and lettuce-bots, which pull up the weeds near the base of the plant, among many other farming robots.

5. Bomb squad

A bomb disposal robot checks out a car in Epping, NSW.Source: News Limited

There are more than 450 bomb squads in America, which respond to thousands of bomb-related incidents each year, according to federal statistics. Already, some of these bomb squads use robots, which often can better dispose of the bombs, while minimising the risk to human lives. The robots have other law enforcement applications as well — like infiltrating hostage situations — says Colin Angle, iRobot CEO and co-Founder of iRobot, maker of the Roomba robot vacuum.

6. Housekeeper

Robot vacuum cleaners might just be the first step to HAL-9000.Source: Supplied

The vacuuming robot has been around for a while, but it’s getting better than ever: The Roomba 880, the latest version of the floor-cleaning robot, has earned stellar reviews, with some testers saying it does a better job than any upright vacuum, especially on pet hair. The company who makes the Roomba, iRobot, also makes the Scooba 450, which scrubs the floors, as well as a sweeping and gutter-cleaning robot. iRobot says it is has sold more than 10 million home robots alone.

7. Paralegals and doc-review-focused attorneys

If you’re a paralegal your job could be replaced by robots. But they probably won’t look like Six from Battlestar Galactica.Source: News Limited

Clients pay millions for attorneys and paralegals to do some of the work that robots can simply do better — namely the dreaded “doc review,” in which people search hundreds of documents looking for mentions of certain items or concepts. Silicon Valley-based Blackstone Discovery offers that service — it can search both words and concepts — without the need for human hours. Robots, unlike humans, don’t tire of rote tasks such as this, and thus are often better equipped for it, experts say.

8. Tellers and clerks

Robotic teller machines will be much more personalised and intuitive than ATMs.Source: Supplied

The bank branch is expensive to maintain, thanks in part to the cost of bank tellers’ labour — a cost that robots can, and in some cases already do, help eliminate. At least one bank is trying to drastically reduce that cost: At 16 Coastal Federal Credit Union branches, consumers won’t find a single bank teller when they walk into a branch; instead, they’ll find “personal teller machines” that do much of what the teller could. The move resulted in a 40% reduction in teller staff, a spokesperson for the bank says. Other banks are experimenting with similar options, says Better ATM Services CEO Todd Nuttall, whose company enables ATMs to dispense prepaid gift cards. The store and mailroom clerk may also find their employment opportunities similarly downsized.

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